


The Man in the Box

by Mhalachai



Series: Travelling, Travelling (Doctor Who crossovers) [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Supernatural
Genre: AU, Crossover, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 21:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mhalachai/pseuds/Mhalachai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean Winchester was four years old, the man in the blue box came to take him away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man in the Box

**Author's Note:**

> We get to see Doctors Seven through Ten in this.
> 
>  
> 
> Published in February, 2008, on livejournal

* * *

When Dean Winchester was four years old, the man in the blue box came to take him away.

Something had woken Dean up and he crawled out of bed because while he wasn't a baby like Sam who needed Mommy all night, the something that woke up him had made him scared. He picked up Bear-Bear by the paw and walked to his door and looked down the hall, just in time to see Daddy going into Sammy's room.

There was a weird thing happening to the lights in the hallway. Dean stuck his finger in his mouth as he watched the lights flicker. It wasn't scary, because he wasn't a baby, but it made his stomach feel bad. Like it had when he'd run after his soccer ball into the road and the big car had stopped so close to his face and Mommy had yelled at him and cried and hugged him so tight.

Then a sound came from Sammy's room. Daddy shouting, and Sammy screaming, and underneath it all the crackling of a fire like they had in the backyard sometimes, only the sound was too close to be coming from the backyard. 

Dean ran down the hall in his bare feet, holding Bear-Bear by the paw, to where Daddy shouted and Sammy screamed. Mommy should come and make him stop, Dean knew. But where was Mommy?

Dean stopped outside Sammy's door. Inside the room, there was fire everywhere, and shouting and screaming and heat and smoke and fire and the fire was moving, across the room and covering Sammy's bed and Mommy was on the ceiling and she was burning and Daddy was in the middle of the room and he was burning and Sammy was screaming and then a man in the hallway, picking up Dean and running with him out of the house.

Outside, the whole house was on fire. 

The man carried Dean across the street, past Daddy's empty car and to a little blue shed with writing on the top and little glass windows. Past them rushed the fire trucks that Dean used to love, to Dean's house but the house was covered in flames now, and it wasn't like Dean's house at all.

The man opened the door to the shed and carried Dean inside. The door slammed behind them. Then the man put Dean down and knelt beside him. "Are you hurt?" the man asked. His voice sounded funny and Dean was too scared to say anything.

Quickly, the man patted Dean all over, checking his eyes and ears and feeling all over his head. This was familiar, and so Dean said, "Are you a doctor?"

The man looked at Dean closely. "Yes," he finally said. "I'm the Doctor."

"Oh," Dean said, and hugged Bear-Bear tight. Then Dean said, "I want my Mommy and Daddy."

The man's face went sad. "Oh, boy. I'm so sorry."

Dean didn't understand, but he watched as the man stood, his red scarf all messy, and walked around to the thing in the middle of the box. A little TV screen went on and the man poked at it. The TV showed the street outside, with the fire trucks and the fire at Dean's house.

It was a very big fire. 

Dean put his finger back in his mouth and hugged Bear-Bear tight and wanted Mommy, but Mommy had been on the ceiling in Sammy's room and her nightdress had been all red in the middle and she'd been on fire. 

The Doctor watched the fire for a long time before he came back over to Dean. "What's your name?" he asked.

Dean had been told never to tell his name to strangers, but this was a doctor and that was like a policeman, right? "I'm Dean Winchester," he said, taking his finger out of his mouth. 

"Well, Dean Winchester." The man tried to smile, but he still had the sad face. "I have some bad news."

Dean didn't like that. It made his stomach feel bad again. "I want my Mommy and Daddy," he said.

The Doctor took a deep breath. "Dean, your family is... your family is dead," he said quietly. Dean blinked at him. "Do you understand what that means?"

Dean nodded, because that's what he was supposed to do when someone asked him a question. Then he asked, "When can I see Mommy?"

The Doctor pushed the hair off Dean's forehead. His hand smelled like smoke. "Poor child," he murmured. 

Dean stuck his finger in his mouth. He wanted his Mommy and he hated the feeling in his stomach and he didn't understand.

* * *

Dean fell asleep around Bear-Bear and when he woke up he was still in the big blue box and the Doctor was staring at his TV. "All dead!" the Doctor was saying to the TV. "All of them, everyone Mary Winchester knew, all dead! How is that even possible? Why were they after the boy?"

Dean sat up. Bear-Bear flopped over and then Dean remembered all the fire and the screaming and the bad feeling came back to his stomach. 

The Doctor came over. "Hello, Dean," he said.

"Hi," Dean said. He pulled Bear-Bear close. "Can I go home now?" 

The Doctor sat down. "No, you can't," he said softly. "Dean, do you have grandparents?"

Dean shook his head. "Mommy was sad last week because they were in a car crash and they passed on." Dean didn't understand what that meant or why Mommy was so sad, but it made the Doctor nod his head.

"What about aunts and uncles?"

Dean frowned. 

"I mean, did your mother or father have any brothers or sisters?"

Oh. Dean shook his head. "Mommy used to have lots, but they all passed on too."

The Doctor's face went from being sad to being very strict. "Very methodical," he murmured. Then he clapped his hands. "Dean, we're going to take a little trip."

"Where?" Dean asked in a tiny voice. He wasn't sure if he wanted to go anywhere, not without Mommy and Daddy and even Sammy.

"To a place where you'll be safe." The Doctor stood. "Come along, I'll need to buckle you in, in case the trip gets bumpy."

"Like a seat-belt!" Dean said, taking the offered and clambering to his feet. "Are we going in a car?"

"No, we're going in the TARDIS," the Doctor said. He put Dean in a chair in the middle of the room and put the seatbelt around him. "This is the TARDIS. It's like a ship. It moves in time and space."

Dean made sure that Bear-Bear was tucked in. "Can Sammy come with us?" he asked.

The Doctor's face went strict again. "No, Dean, I'm sorry." He wasn't scary when he was strict, just very tall. "Your brother Sam is... he's dead. Like your parents."

"Oh." Dean thought about Sammy, and how badly he'd screamed the previous night. "Is he alone? Sammy doesn't like to be alone."

The Doctor shook his head. "Sammy will never be alone, not anymore."

Dean was quiet as the big blue box started moving and spinning and going backwards and forwards at the same time.

* * *

When Dean Winchester was four years old, the man in the blue box took him to a world with bright blue skies and purple grass and horses the size of trucks. 

Dean held Bear-Bear tight as the Doctor took him by the hand, out of the blue box and across the purple grass to a large building with children playing outside. They went into the building and went down the hall to a door that had weird lettering on it and there the Doctor knocked loudly.

A woman opened the door. Her face was strange, with light green skin and dark green hair. Dean stared and stared as she knelt down and smiled at him. 

"Dean, can you stay with the Matron for a minute while I speak with the Headmistress?" the Doctor asked. "I'll be right over there."

Dean nodded, unable to take his eyes off the green lady. She kept smiling. "I'm Matron Trrisa," she said. "What's your name?"

"I'm Dean Winchester," Dean whispered. "And this is Bear-Bear."

"It's very nice to meet you, Dean." The green lady took his hand. She was soft and cool and smelled like flowers. "Do you want to see some of the toys we have here?"

The Doctor was back in a few minutes. Dean didn't want to look up from the toys, but the man tapped the back of his hand. "Dean."

"Uh huh?" Dean asked, distracted by the glowing stick he was waving about.

"Dean, these people are going to take care of you."

Dean lowered the stick and looked at the man.

"Do you understand?"

Dean stared. 

The Doctor sighed. "This is the best inter-species orphanage in the fifty-first century," he said. Most of the words didn't make any sense to Dean, but he kept listening. "What happened to your family... you wouldn't be safe at home, not as a child. The staff here will keep you safe and help you grow up."

Dean chewed on his finger. "Why can't I go with you?"

The Doctor smiled. "I live a very hectic life," he said. "It's not the life for a child. But I'll tell you what." He touched Dean's nose. "I'll come back and see you often, how does that sound?"

Dean looked at Bear-Bear. "Okay," he said in a tiny voice. 

The Doctor made his sad face again. "You take care of yourself, Dean Winchester." He ruffled Dean's hair as he stood up. "I'll be back to see you soon."

And then the Doctor was gone.

Matron Trrisa came and took Dean by the hand and took him upstairs to his new room with a view of the purple grass and the playground, and helped him take a bath to get rid of the smoke smell in his hair, and then when Dean started to cry for his Mommy she hugged him until he fell asleep.

That was his first day at the orphanage.

He was there for a very long time.

* * *

The Doctor came back every so often. He and Dean would go on an outing, going to buy ice cream or candy and they would talk about the state of the universe and all kinds of science. Dean always felt better when the Doctor came around, and was also secretly relieved when the man left.

Then one day the Doctor came back and he was a whole different man, but Dean knew him, and that was the start of a conversation about the Time Lords and time travel and even though Dean was only nine, he thought he understood a little about time paradoxes and not interfering and he didn't ask, not even once, if he could go back in time and see his parents before they died.

When the Doctor wasn't there, Dean went to classes and did his chores and grew up. He had friends of all different species, and they played and did their homework and went on outings. Dean got into trouble occasionally and had to do more chores, but life wasn't that bad. Not nearly as bad as that old Earth guy, Charles Dickens, talked about orphanages. People back in the past didn't know anything.

Dean knew that, because he liked to read and he liked learning about science, especially the science of blowing things up. He was really good at that. 

Then there were a few years when the Doctor didn't come back. 

The next time that Dean saw the Doctor, he was thirteen and the Doctor had a new face and it was like he'd lost everything in the whole world. 

The Doctor took Dean out of classes and they sat on the benches by the playground. 

The Doctor looked at Dean and said, "I'm about to do something unforgivable."

Dean tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. "What's that?"

The Doctor tried to smile. "I'm going to tell you the truth about what happened to your family."

And he did. 

Out came the whole story, of Earth's demons and how they were really the ancestors of aliens that came to earth millions of years before humans evolved. How a demon named Azazel killed Dean's family and was trying to kill Dean but the Doctor had noticed the strange energy readings on the TARDIS and had arrived almost too late to save Dean, let alone save the rest of his family.

Soon enough, the Doctor left. There was nothing left he could say, and nothing that Dean wanted to hear.

The Doctor was right about one thing.

Dean wasn't sure he could forgive the man for hiding the truth for so long.

* * *

The Doctor didn't come back. Dean turned sixteen and left the orphanage. All he had were the clothes on his back and the pile of money the Doctor left in trust for him. He'd long ago given Bear-Bear to a little girl who came to the orphanage after seeing her whole family drown. 

He kicked around for a while, not sure what he wanted to do with his life. He'd spend four years learning all he could about Earth's demons, but he knew that was a dead end. And he was sick of looking back at the life he might have had. 

He went to the central planet of the solar system he'd grown up in. Everything and everyone went through there eventually, and Dean was pretty sure that he would find something there that suited him.

What he found there was a bustling planet with all kinds of everything, militaries and agencies abounding, and _him._

A gorgeous boy, hardly older than Dean himself, with wide shoulders and an amazing mouth and fewer inhibitions than Dean had. They were together, hot and heavy, for a few weeks, then the gorgeous boy from the Boeshane Peninsula was accepted into the Time Agency and he left Dean with nothing but amazing memories and the wonder if that might have been love.

Dean hadn't bothered to apply to the Time Agency. They'd never accept a time orphan like himself, and he wasn't sure if he wanted that temptation. For all the Doctor told him about time paradoxes, Dean knew deep down that he'd want to test that theory, to try and save his family.

He found a job apprenticing with a security detail for an archeological firm, and spent four years on dusty outposts with ex-military men and mercenaries, learning all he could. 

And learn he did.

* * *

Dean was twenty-five, or twenty-six, he wasn't really sure which, hanging in a cage over a gaping canyon, about to die, when he heard an unfamiliar voice from the next cage over say, "It's been a long time, Dean."

Dean twisted around, peering through the twilight to see a thin man with messy brown hair beaming at him. He'd never seen the man before, and he knew exactly who it was.

"Damn it!" Dean renewed his efforts to open the lock. "Don't suppose you can get us out of here, Doctor?"

"Won't take a minute." The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the lock of his cage, then of Dean's cage. "There we go!"

Indistinct muttering from the other cage let Dean know that the Doctor wasn't alone.

"Yes, well, there is that minor problem there," the Doctor conceded. 

"What problem?" Dean asked. The door to his cage swung open, removing the last barrier between him and the canyon. Not a big improvement. 

"The getting down part."

Dean flashed the Doctor a grin. "Not a problem." He removed his woven belt and with a flick of this hand, released the catch and it unraveled into an impossibly long, strong rope, long enough to get them out of there. "Catch!"

It took about ten minutes to get all three of them out up and out of the canyon, which was two minutes after the angry natives spotted them and then it was a whole lot of running for their lives amid laser blasts.

"Ah ha!" the Doctor cheered as they finally, miraculously, burst into the TARDIS unharmed. "Let's get out of here!"

He punched and pulled at the consol, different than when Dean had last seen it, but still the same old time machine.

Dean finally got a good look at the other member of their party, a gorgeous young woman with fire in her eyes. "Hey," he said with a grin. The TARDIS lurched and he toppled over. The woman, who had been holding on to the rail, laughed freely. Dean wasn't offended. "You come here often?"

"Who are you, now?" the woman asked, extending a hand to help Dean up. 

"I'm Dean. And you seem far too beautiful to be traveling with him." Dean jerked his head at the Doctor.

The man glared. "In spite of no longer having such big ears, I can still hear you!"

The woman laughed some more. "I'm Martha Jones," she said. "How do you know the Doctor?"

"He saved my life when I was a kid," Dean said easily. He would never let the Doctor know how long it took him to think of those things without raging. "You?"

"Oh, we travel around," Martha said, and her cheeks went pink. Dean raised an eyebrow. So, that was how it was. 

"Interesting." Dean turned to the Doctor. "So, where are we going?"

The Doctor fixed him with a sharp eye. "Do you have anywhere to be?"

Dean's negative answer was a little too quick.

"Want to see a bit of the universe?"

"Hell yes!"

And off they went. Dean wasn't sure if he'd totally forgiven the Doctor for telling him the truth all those years ago, but it didn't matter all that much when faced with what he'd always wanted. 

To see things beyond what he'd ever seen.

* * *

He was with the Doctor and Martha for a few months, long enough to get into a hell of a lot more trouble than he would on his own, and that was the best kind. 

One day, when Martha was trying on clothes in a bazaar and Dean was trying to get the Doctor to sample the local beer, the Doctor said abruptly, "There's something I need to tell you."

Dean swore under his breath. "Now what?" he demanded. "You're going to tell me that you're my long-lost father or something?"

The Doctor frowned. "You read too many novels."

"Shut up."

"You do. You'd have liked Charles Dickens, he was a hoot." The Doctor glanced over to make sure Martha wasn't in trouble. "It is about your family, though."

Dean raised his hand to order another beer. He had a suspicion he was going to need it. "What now?"

"Someone using your brother's name popped up in 2007." 

Dean waited until he had finished his first beer. "So, identify theft?"

"There was an association with demonic activity."

Dean rolled the beer bottle, made of a polymer invented a thousand years before, between his fingers. "That's all you got? Some demonic bastard killed my brother and then ripped off his identity?"

"That's one possibility. There's only one way to find out."

Dean accepted the new beer from the waiter. "And what's that?"

The Doctor shrugged. "You could go back."

"Back where?"

"To your life. Earth, when and where you were supposed to be."

Dean frowned. "Why would you take me away from there if you're just going to send me back?"

The Doctor fiddled with his glass. "I'm not going to send you anywhere. I took you away from that place because you were too young to protect yourself and there was nowhere for you to go." He leaned across the table. "Dean, the demons had killed your family, and they didn't stop there. They murdered everyone your mother had ever met. I don't know why they were after you, but you were defenseless. I couldn't leave you there."

Dean couldn't meet the man's eyes. "I know that," he muttered. "And it's not like my life sucked or anything." He remembered a few choice moments that had certainly not sucked, and smirked. The Doctor made a disgusted sound. "But can I just go back?"

"You could. Or I could take you back to your life in 5249."

"What do the history books say?"

"I haven't looked."

Dean blinked. "If you looked, you'd know what happens."

"Oh yes," the Doctor said cheerfully. "Which is why I haven't looked."

Dean rolled his eyes. "I hate time travelers."

Across the square, Martha exited the shop, her hands full of bags. Dean watched her approach. 

"So," he said. "You and Martha?"

The Doctor sputtered into his water. "What? No! Nothing like that."

"Hmm," Dean said. He took a sip of his beer. "You're an idiot."

"Maybe so, but I'm not sure what business it is of yours."

Dean shook his head and got to his feet. "Come on, Martha," he called. "Time waits for no man."

She gave him a bemused smile. "Where are we going?"

Dean looked at the Doctor. "Back to 2007, am I right?"

The Doctor just looked back. "It's up to you."

"It's not, and you know that."

The Doctor stood. "Well, then. Let's go."

Martha looked between the men, obviously confused but not questioning. "On the count of three, then."

* * *

The Doctor dropped Dean off in early 2007, just a few weeks before he'd met Martha the first time. "So I don't accidentally run into myself," he explained.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Martha asked Dean. "You're not used to this time."

Dean picked up the backpack he'd stuffed with items lying around the TARDIS. The Doctor had already confiscated the forty-seventh-century laser hammer he'd try to take with him. "Maybe not, but I need to do this. Find the evil that killed my family, all that Star Wars bullshit."

Martha gave him a smile. Gods, she was beautiful. The Doctor really was an idiot. "Just be careful. And if you need anything, call my mobile."

"Sure thing." Dean smiled at her, adjusted the backpack on his shoulder, and then leaned and kissed her just for the hell of it.

From behind them, the Doctor cleared his throat loudly. "Don't you have things to do?"

Dean pulled back from the kiss and winked. "You take care of yourself."

"I will," Martha replied, a little flustered. "You too."

Dean stepped back and took the Doctor's offered hand. "Don't get into too much trouble," the Doctor said. "And be careful."

"I will." Dean stepped in and hugged the man who had been the only father Dean could remember. "Thanks."

The Doctor ruffled Dean's hair, the way he had when Dean was a child. "I'll see you around."

And that was that. Dean turned around, and stepped out of the TARDIS and back into his world the way he'd left -- from the side of the man in the blue box.

_end_


End file.
